This is another staple on board the Amelie Rose – rarely a trip goes by when some version of this doesn’t pop out of the hatch for one lunchtime or another. Although it’s basically just glorified cheese on toast it’s fast, it’s tasty and there is rarely any left.

Ok, so everyone has a chilli recipe, right? In that case why bother to include this in my Galley Squawks at all you may wonder. The thing is, it’s such a staple when we’re aboard, and we get so many admiring comments (and so few leftovers) that I thought we really should.

After a month of crazy hard work and an all nighter last night loading content - we've finally launched our brand new website!

The Paimpol "Festival du Chant de Marin" (sea shanty festival) is probably our favourite of the Breton festivals, indeed Nick has been on French telly pronouncing it to be the Goldilocks of them all. It's not too big (Brest can be daunting) and not too small (Entre Terre et Mer in Morlaix didn't really have enough to keep the crew occupied), but like baby bear’s porridge, it’s just right!

As mentioned elsewhere, the Isles of Scilly hold an enduring fascination for us and one of the highpoints of 2018 was surely that we got to spend a whole fortnight buzzing about them on our Clean Seas Odyssey. Over the years we’ve experienced Scilly in all kinds of weather, with the wind coming from most points of the compass and this, plus help from our friends and our trusty Pilot Book, have given us quite a repertoire of anchorages and havens to hole up in. In no particular order here’s ten of our favourites.

Twenty nineteen is going to be a big year for Amelie Rose. On April 24th it will be exactly 10 years to the day since her keel touched the water for the very first time. Ten years of adventures, ten years of making new friends and meeting them again and again, ten years in which the best part of 20,000 miles have passed under her keel.

The Clean Seas Odyssey Project was a wonderful sabbatical from our usual training and adventure fare but we missed the opportunity to share our world with more of you wonderful folks and Amelie Rose is a working boat at heart so it’s time to get back to doing what we do best. Read on to find out what we have planned for 2019!

It’s over 12 years since I first met Luke Powell on the deck of his boat Agnes. Since that fateful day he has built me the Amelie Rose and still we’ve become good friends. All that time he has harboured an ambition to build a big boat, a boat that would show off the pinnacle of what Pilot Cutters were capable of being. The Pellew is that boat and it turns out that she’s more than just a behemoth.

What a year. It started with one massively tall order; “to make a difference to the problem of plastic pollution entering our seas”, and nothing but the boat and some vague ideas to work with. So how did it end? Were we successful? Read on to find out more!